Kareem Hunt ranks No. 7 on Pro Football Weekly’s 2018 running back rankings

Despite leading the NFL in rushing during his rookie season, Kareem Hunt has six other running backs ranked in front of him heading into his sophomore year.

Kareem Hunt came into the NFL staring up at five others taken before him. One year later, Pro Football Weekly has another six names in front.

We saw what he thought of such rankings in 2017.

When the Kansas City Chiefs first drafted Hunt in the third round of the 2017 NFL Draft, he was the sixth running back taken overall. Coming into the NFL, the running backs class was considered especially deep, and the Chiefs found considerable value in the third when they traded up and grabbed Hunt—who John Dorsey said was the last running back available at that particular second-tier on the Chiefs’ draft board.

One year later it’s clear that a re-draft would definitely shift some other big boards around. Hunt not only made everyone pay attention in the opening game of the NFL season with a record-setting 246 total yards from scrimmage, but he went on to win the NFL’s rushing title as a rookie with 1,327 rushing yards—only the sixth rookie to ever accomplish the feat.

As a rookie, Hunt showed impressive vision, an unexpected shiftiness, incredible agility, decent top speed and, above all, the ability to absorb tacklers and remain on his feet. He’s nearly impossible to bring down, which often turns 3-yard gains into 6-yard bursts. He’s also a willing and capable blocker with great hands to be a threat out of the backfield.

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Put together, he’s the total package who proved quite early to be among the NFL’s elite, which is why we’re left scratching our heads when we read Pro Football Weekly’s running back rankings for 2018. The exact metrics aren’t revealed, but they did say the following:

"Pro Football Weekly’s player rankings are compiled with the help of NFL evaluators and coaches, with input from the entire PFW staff."

Some names are understandable and it’s likely even Hunt himself would be fine sitting behind Le’Veon Bell or Todd Gurley. Perhaps David Johnson and Zeke Elliott also deserve a spot above Hunt, since the Chiefs back is only one year into his career. But even here the line gets muddied.

LeSean McCoy is up next, and we’d all be just fine if Hunt ended up with such an accomplished career as McCoy has enjoyed. That said, McCoy is also 30-years-old and had 200 yards from scrimmage less than Hunt last year. Now that Hunt has the experience in Andy Reid’s offense, a rookie quarterback who will need some help taking off the heat and a full offseason to work out with the team’s staff and coaches, Hunt should only get better (while McCoy is unlikely to make a veteran leap).

Even after McCoy is Jordan Howard, who is a great running back for the Chicago Bears, but right now, everyone in the NFL is high on Matt Nagy projections—as if he’s going to make Mitchell Trubisky and the Bears offense into a replica of the Rams’ Greatest Show on Turf. Every player on the Bears roster has been compared to the Chiefs (e.g. “Burton will be Kelce and Cohen will be Tyreek and…”), and it just doesn’t work that way in the NFL.

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Put simply, Hunt is a top 5 running back in the NFL and even then could be a top 3. He’s a league leader who wasn’t even used much during a midseason slump and he had a single carry in the final game of the year. It’s likely that he eclipses 2,000 yards from scrimmage in 2018. Then we’ll see what he thinks of these sorts of rankings once again.